Christmas Eve 2008

Christmas Eve this year was spent getting ready for a ginormous evening meal, and then of course church service that night. Alyssa came over early in the day to help me with the babies, then headed to the hotel with mom to get ready while Jeff and I took the babies to the apartment. Norah tried talking her uncles into letting her play with the drumsticks, but once she realized that they weren't going to let her run with them (thank goodness!) she dragged them into the kitchen and over to the pantry where she knows they keep her snacks. We all spent the afternoon snacking on treats, of which the clementines were the most popular!

The meal was absolutely delicious and we all ate more than we should have. As is tradition, we opened our one Christmas gift, only we did it before church this year, knowing how late it was going to be when service concluded. This present always turns out to be our Christmas pajamas and as usual they were great!

The guys all headed to church to help usher while we went home to get changed and then meet them there. The kids looked adorable in their Christmas Eve outfits, and had everyone coming up to them to tell them how cute they looked. Because it was the 9:30 service we anticipated the kids not sitting through the entire thing, so I wasn't surprised when Justin started to get a little fussy. I immediately stood up to head back to the cry room, when I heard a horrible (and very loud) shriek from behind me. I just kept going to the room, and once there I turned around to find Jeff with Norah right behind me. Apparently she had stood up on the pew, pointed at me and shrieked when she saw me leaving! We had the room all to ourselves, and were able to let Norah run around and play while we listened to the sermon. It also happened to be a great vantage point when the lights were turned off at the end during the hymn Silent Night. Everyone held up their candles in the dark, and from where we were we could see all of them! What a beautiful sight.

After the service concluded we took a couple of pictures (unfortunately the one of us all together is blurry due to a lack of flash and too much movement), said hello to friends, said good night and headed home. We dressed everyone in their pajamas, and headed to bed.....but not without leaving out cookies for Santa of course!